Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and widely known as the "father of AlphaGo," announced plans to establish a "Google AI Campus" in Korea within this year. The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) signed a memorandum of understanding with DeepMind, Google's AI development subsidiary, on the 27th to build an AI cooperation framework containing these plans. The AI Campus will serve as a space where AI researchers dispatched by Google, domestic academics and startups collaborate together.
Expectations are high for the Google AI Campus as it will serve as the site where Google DeepMind and Korean personnel carry out the "K-Moonshot Project." K-Moonshot, one of the government-led AI utilization projects, aims to solve 12 national missions, including advanced bio, future energy, physical AI, semiconductors and quantum, by combining AI with science and technology, while accelerating innovation. With Korea already suffering from a shortage of top talent, Google DeepMind's support in the AI technology field is most welcome.
Hassabis, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing a program that predicts protein structures using AI, also led the development of the Go-playing AI AlphaGo in 2016. At the time, Korea showcased its status as an epicenter of the AI wave by hosting a match between AlphaGo and the world's top professional Go player, but has since fallen behind in responding to AI-driven changes. This is largely due to various regulations blocking research and development (R&D) in the AI field and poor infrastructure that hinders the inflow of advanced talent. In fact, according to a report last year by Stanford University in the United States, Korea's net AI talent outflow stood at 0.36 per 10,000 people, ranking 35th out of 38 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, placing it near the bottom. The Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) has also released findings projecting a shortage of 12,800 AI workers by next year.
For Korea to emerge as one of the world's top three AI powers, it must reinvent itself as an "innovation talent platform" country that the world's best talent eagerly wants to join. To achieve this, the nation must concentrate its capabilities on dramatically improving salary and compensation systems to bring domestic talent back home, as well as on attracting top overseas talent to work in Korea. The sooner outdated regulations such as the 52-hour workweek, which constrains research activities in advanced industries like AI and semiconductors, are abolished, the better.
